bug report Bugs I wish were fixed for Christmas

[Elena Kolpakova]

Here are a couple of bugs, that have been annoying me for ages. Christmas is coming in two months, so who knows, maybe Santa brings me some bug fixes this year - I've been a good girl, I promise.

1. Cakewalk crashes when opening an existing project if the Untitled project hasn't been closed.
2. Browser is expanded upon project opening even if it was collapsed upon project save.
3. Piano roll always opens at 01:01:000 when double-clicking on a clip for the first time after project opening.
4. Can't save the multi-dock size and its tabs.
5. Automation nodes for VSTs loaded inside Komplete Kontrol all show the same value (likely NI's issue).

Yeah, that's it, just 5 small issues that are happening on day-to-day basis and are killing a bit of motivation every time I open CbB. In fact, I'm not gonna be surprised if the first four have the same root cause as all of them are related to opening a project.

If more information/data is needed, please feel free to get in touch.

Sorry if any of the lines below are confusing, incomplete, wrong or misleading in some way, that is not intentional.

 

#1. Cakewalk crashes when opening an existing project if the Untitled project hasn't been closed.

Reproduction steps:

1. Go to Preferences / File / Advanced.
2. Untick "Allow Only One Open Project at a Time" if ticked.
3. Tick "On Startup Load the Default Template" if unticked.
4. Go to Preferences / Customization / Display.
5. Tick "Show Start Screen" if unticked.
6. Hit Apply/OK to save and close the preferences and close CbB.
7. Start CbB again.
8. You should see an Untitled project opened with the Normal template and the Startup Screen.
9. In the Startup Screen switch to Recent Projects and open the last project you worked on.

Expected:

1. Untitled project remains loaded.
2. The project selected from the Startup Screen is loaded successfully.

Observed:

1. Cakewalk crashes while opening the selected project.

Notes:

1. Workaround: before opening the recent project, close the Untitled project.
2. Not sure, but it could be that this has something to do with my Normal template (I have it modified quite a bit, incl. 3rd-party plugins dropped here and there). I can provide the template file if necessary.

 

#2. Browser is expanded upon project opening even if it was collapsed upon project save.

Reproduction steps:

1. Close all projects but keep CbB opened.
2. Create a new project.
3. Make sure you have:
   1. Control Bar displayed on top,
   2. Inspector docked at left and expanded,
   3. Browser with help module, synth rack, and the browser itself docked at right and expanded.
   4. MultiDock docked at bottom and collapsed. MultiDock may have some tabs like PRV or Console View in it.
4. Collapse the browser.
5. Save the project and close it.
6. Open the project you just closed.

Expected:

1. Project opens successfully and the Browser remains collapsed as it was upon saving and closing.

Observed:

1. Project opens successfully but the Browser is expanded, i.e. its collapsed state was not saved.
2. Before closing:
   
3. After re-opening:
   

 

#3. Piano roll always opens at 01:01:000 when double-clicking on a clip for the first time after project opening.

Reproduction steps:

1. Close all projects but keep CbB opened.
2. Create a new project.
3. Create a synth or MIDI track.
4. Drop/record some notes so that you have at least one MIDI clip on a track.
5. Move the clip somewhere to the right, say, at bar 16 or 64 or wherever - important is that this position doesn't fit the current horisontal zoom level of your PRV. Typically my PRV fits no more than a couple of bars.
6. Make sure that double-click on the clip is set up to open the PRV.
7. Save the project and close it.
8. Open the project you just closed.
9. Double-click on the clip to edit the notes in PRV.

Expected:

1. PRV displays the notes of the double-clicked clip.

Observed:

1. PRV displays the the contents of the selected Track but at 01:01:000, i.e. it's not horisontally scrolled to the location of the notes in the selected clip.
2. 

Notes:

1. This only happens once after the project is opened. All consequent double-clicks on the clips open the PRV at the right time. So the workaround is to close the PRV and double-click the clip again.
2. The position of the Now time marker seems to have no effect on this, i.e. I tried to set the Now time to the position of the clip before double-clicking it, but that didn't help.

 

#4. Can't save the MultiDock size and its tabs.

Reproduction steps:

1. Create a new project, e.g. based on Empty Project template.
2. Press D to expand the MultiDock which has Console view in it by default.
3. Drag the top border of the MultiDock to the as far to the top as possible, so that it has all the available display space.
4. Press D twice to collapse and expand MultiDock - notice that it expands back to the "fullscreen" view, which makes it a very easy way to switch between TRV and MultiDock which typically has your current editor in focus.
5. Save the project and close it.
6. Open the project again.
7. Press D to expand the MultiDock.

Expected:

1. MultiDock expands to the same size as it was prior to closing the project, i.e. it stores the full height.

Observed:

1. MultiDock expands to the default size vertically, keeping some parts of the TV still visible.
2. In fact, MultiDock is completely reset, i.e. all tabs but Console view are gone after the project reopening.
3. Before closing:
   
4. After re-opening:
   

 

#5. Automation nodes for VSTs loaded inside Komplete Kontrol all show the same value.

This one is likely the bug on the NI/integration side, but would be sweet to get a confirmation that CbB treats all the data coming from KK in line with the standard.

Reproduction steps:

1. Create a new project.
2. Make sure the values are set up to be displayed for the automation envelopes in the View / Display menu of the TV.
3. Create a Synth Track with NI Komplete Kontrol as the synth.
4. In KK, load an actual synth of choice, e.g. I used Synapse Audio Obsession for this purpose of the demo.
5. Once the synth is loaded, close the KK plug-in window and focus on the synth track in CbB's TV.
6. Click the button to create/open automation lanes - by default a lane for Track Volume is created.
7. Change the automated parameter from Track Volume to that of the Synapse Audio Obsession within KK - these usually start at Controller #101 with the first 100 being reserved and used for automating the parameters of the KK instance itself.
8. Now start adding some nodes to the curve.

Expected:

1. All nodes get their corresponding values.

Observed:

1. All nodes get exactly the same value displayed - it is the value corresponding to the envelope value at the Now time.

Notes:

This works correctly for plugins loaded without NI KK or for the parameters of the KK instance itself such as Scale Type, Chord Mode, etc. So it seems that the bridge between the plugin inside KK and CbB is somehow broken.

[Byron Dickens]

I don't know about your first one, but 2, 3 and 4 are expected behavior tied to whatever workspace you are using.

[David Baay]

 

I can't repro #1; might be related to something in your default template. I don't normally have CbB set to open the default template on launch but it didn't cause a problem. And I often open an existing project over an unsaved project started manually from my default a template and have never had a crash in that case either.

I agree with Byron that #2 and #4 are likely Workspace-related. I don't use Workspaces, and don't have those issues.

Regarding #3, I have keybindings for Goto From and Goto Thru (don't recall the defaults if there are any). Hitting either one of these in the situation you describe will take the PRV to the Now time

[Elena Kolpakova]

Thanks both of you, I didn't even realise I had a workspace selected ?

I do disagree that #3 is expected behaviour. It would be, had I opened the PRV with a shortcut. But double-clicking on a clip should focus on the location regardless of the workspace used IMO. But even if it is...

I have now tried both options:

1. Disabling "Apply Workspace on Project Load" option.
2. Switching to "None" workspace.

• Issue #2 has been resolved by option #2 (the first one didn't fix it)
• Issue #3 appears to be resolved (more like workarounded really) by both option #1 and #2
• Issue #4 is resolved by neither option #1 and option #2.

The max I could achieve with option #2 were the following actions/steps:

1. Open the project - at this point I only have Console in the MultiDock with its default height.
2. Select "None" workspace.
3. Open PRV by double-clicking the MIDI clip and adjust the height to the desired level.
4. Switch to Console View and apply some settings there, e.g. hide some buses, narrow some tracks, etc.
5. Switch back to PRV - all this time MultiDock remained with the desired height set at step 3.
6. Press D twice to make sure collapsing/expanding MultiDock restores it to its new desired height set at step 3.
7. Save the project.
8. Close the project.
9. Reopen the project.

Which resulted in the following observations:

1. MultiDock is opened with PRV with the same track, height as it was saved at step 7 - brilliant. However.
2. The location is slightly moved so that Now time is strictly on the left side of the PRV. Not too bad, but not exactly how I had it saved.
3. Filter is disabled so I actually see all tracks unless I re-enable the filter myself, which takes an extra click.
4. Press D to collapse the MultiDock.
5. Double-click on some random MIDI clip in TV.
6. PRV for the clip is opened in MultiDock but MultiDock has the wrong height now.

See the screenshots below.

Before closing:

 

 After reopening:
 

 

After collapsing and reopening PRV for another clip:

[user 905133]

Quote

Go to Preferences / File / Advanced.

Untick "Allow Only One Open Project at a Time" if ticked.

I learned about 10-15 years ago that there were some settings that will cause crashes if more than one project is open, but I haven't tested it since then. For me I was syncing a sound module with a hardware sequencer (E-Mu Proteus 2500) with SONAR/Cakewalk.  Sometimes I had the Proteus as the Clock Source; other times I had Cakewalk as the Clock Source (depending on the project.

As I recall, without fail, if I had a project opened with one set of clock settings, then opened a second project with different clock settings, and then switched from one project to another, SONAR/Cakewalk would crash.

This might not be relevant, but I solved the problem by having "Allow Only One Project at a Time" ticked to prevent me from making the mistake again.

My studio is very different now so I really can't juggle stuff around to see if this would still happen with Cakewalk by Bandlab.

-------------------

I do use my own Workspaces and based on my experiences I agree with others that Workspaces could cause some of the inconsistencies. Recently another user brought up an issue with a Floating Synth Rack . . . .

[Your reply just came in re: Workspaces.]  I will read that and see if what I was about to type up is still relevant.

UPDATE: Nope; since you don't use Workspaces, nothing relevant to add that hasn't already been said. 

Edited October 31, 2022 by User 905133
added an update

[Noel Borthwick]

@Helene Kolpakova do you have crash dump files? Crashes can be the easiest bugs to fix if we have a dump file that shows the cause… Thanks for reporting your issues. 

[Elena Kolpakova]

Hello @Noel Borthwick
The folder \AppData\Roaming\Cakewalk\Cakewalk Core\MiniDumps\ has no crash dump unfortunately or should I be looking in another folder?

What actually happens is that when I see all project plugins have loaded successfully, CbB suddenly disappears from the screen for good.

If I load the project in Safe Mode, it succeeds even if I choose "Yes to all". However in this case I can see the heights of all tracks are reset. I have a feeling there's something in my template that's breaking it. I could PM the template.

[Noel Borthwick]

If the app is disappearing then the exception is not being caught by Cakewalk. In some heap corruption cases or low level crashes this can happen. 

Does windows event viewer show any status about the crash? 

You can send a link to the template and we can check if there is a repro. Most likely this is plug-in related.

 

[Elena Kolpakova]

Yep, Event Viewer has two Application errors for Cakewalk. The first one is Access Violation (Exception Code = 0xc0000005). Followed by the Unhandled Exception (Exception Code = 0xc000041d).

I've tried to remove all FX and disable all ProChannel instances from the template, but it didn't help. Another possible root cause could be that the template was originally created in quite an old version of Sonar. I mean I've saved and resaved it million times over the years in newer and newer versions, but maybe it still has some data in it that causes a crash now.

I have PM'd (for privacy reasons) the link to the Normal template. Ty.

[Noel Borthwick]

@Helene Kolpakova Your template file opens fine here. As far as I can see there is no issue with the template.

The first error 0xc0000005 is a standard access violation.
41d is an error I haven't encountered.  Its description is:

// MessageId: STATUS_FATAL_USER_CALLBACK_EXCEPTION
// An unhandled exception was encountered during a user callback.
#define STATUS_FATAL_USER_CALLBACK_EXCEPTION ((NTSTATUS)0xC000041DL)

One cause is a kernel mode to user mode callback crashing. If thats the case here the issue would be your ASIO driver crashing which could explain why there is no dump file.  Please try switching out of ASIO mode to WASAPI mode and redo your test. If it doesn't crash now this will isolate the problem to the asio driver.

[Elena Kolpakova]

This is unfortunately not caused by an ASIO driver (would be quite unlikely for an RME card, besides I had this crash with Focusrite card in the past too). In fact, I did the suggested test by switching to WASAPI Exclusive and the crash was still reproducible.

While running the test above, I did spot something interesting - the issue is clearly timing related. If I somehow interrupt the project loading, then it will likely not crash. This is why loading a project in Safe Mode and choosing to load all plugins prevents from crashing. This is also why switching to WASAPI at first also didn't cause a crash - I was asked to map ASIO outputs to WASAPI outputs during the project load. So to actually reproduce the issue using WASAPI, I had to save both my normal template and the project with buses outs set to WASAPI outs.

As suggested, I have also installed WinDbg and tried to dig for the possible root cause using it. While reproducing the issue under the debugger, I was consistently getting a crash while loading bx_control.vst3 from Plugin-Alliance. I then created a version of a project without it and tried to reproduce with it.
This had a weird change -> The project did load without a crash this time, but I've had severe UI issues - here you can see the inspector reflects the track from the loaded project, while the TV still renders the untitled project.

I also noticed the MultiDock has no tabs, double-clicked it to Undock it and indeed everything inside MultiDock looked unrenderable. It looked like some memory corruption was taking place after I removed the PA plugin.

Anyways, I tried to load the same project inside a debugger again -> got issues while loading another PA plugin. Removed that. Started getting issues with SoundToys plugin somewhere in Pace/ilok init. Kept on removing other iLok-protected plugins -> at some point I had no more of them in the project. And this would still render me an Access Violation in the debugger and a crash if executed without a debugger. This time it seems to happen somewhere within CbB itself but while loading some Microsoft modules. I will send the WinDbg output via PM.

[Noel Borthwick]

Thanks for troubleshooting. There may be a false alarm. Some ilok plugins cannot run inside a debugger and we'll force the app to terminate. Which makes them very hard to debug of course!

Your template that you sect me did not have any plugins as far as I saw. Were you using a different file to test?

I'll look at your dump file.

 

[Elena Kolpakova]

Thank you so much for your assistance @Noel Borthwick

To clarify the scenario:

1. Launch Cakewalk -> this creates an Untitled project based on a Normal template.
2. Without closing the Untitled project, open an Existing project from the Startup Screen. The Existing project is also based on the Normal template, but is a proper project with all the tracks, plugins, and other data in it.

The crash occurs the next moment Cakewalk says the Existing project is successfully loaded using the toast notification, probably when it tries to draw the loaded Existing project in the UI.

The Normal template in question is my customised file, that has some tracks, effects, and buses set up for input monitoring, room correction, and the basic mastering chain.

I thought that maybe some of these VST effects in the Normal template are causing the problem, so I removed all of the effects and saved it as another Normal template (renaming the previous one to smth else). This didn't solve the issue, i.e. the crash would still take place. So I sent you that modified Normal template, the one without the VST effects, so that you wouldn't need to have them installed.

2 hours ago, Noel Borthwick said:

There may be a false alarm. Some ilok plugins cannot run inside a debugger and we'll force the app to terminate. Which makes them very hard to debug of course!

Yes, so I removed all iLok-based effects from the Existing project. This way debugger no longer fails during the VST plugin loading, but at the attempt to draw the project in the UI. And this is exactly the dump I have sent you.

[Noel Borthwick]

Great. I have a fix for the crash in your dump file. Will send you a build shortly.

[Noel Borthwick]

@Helene Kolpakova we've finally fixed the load issues with your project - both the crashing problems as well as the case where it would load with the multi-dock and console view being non-functional.  It was a complicated issue caused by a bug in the logic auto closing the template while opening the new project. The original bug dates back to 2016 so it's been there awhile. We're glad to finally fix it since it could have been the cause of many user crashes when opening projects, or projects drawing incorrectly after load.

Thanks for your diligence in reporting it and spending the time to collect all the dump files and diagnostics I asked for. Much appreciated. I guess some consolation is you got a crash course in Windbg

[Elena Kolpakova]

Woah!!! Looks like Christmas's coming earlier this year! Thank you so much! ?It's been a real pleasure and a lot of fun too! Love the WinDbg! ?

[Herbert Zio]

@Noel Borthwick, After the 28.09.0.027 update started to present this crash when loading a new project, I installed the 28.09.0.039 update, and this crash continues, would it be a bug?

[mettelus]

Very nicely written OP there Helene. Merry (early) Christmas!

[Jacques Boileau]

Thanks for sticking with it @Helene Kolpakova and providing great info to the team. It helps us all!

[Noel Borthwick]

2 hours ago, Herbert Miron said:

After the 28.09.0.027 update started to present this crash when loading a new project, I installed the 28.09.0.039 update, and this crash continues, would it be a bug?

Your video doesn't show a crash or anything actionable. Please make a fresh thread and describe the problem in detail. If you have a crash include the dump file. Also it looks like you are using a custom theme. Switch to the default Tungsten theme and retest.